A week out, the last module landed in my email, and I pulled it out and slid it into the Google document that had now become the master file. My eyes about fell out of their sockets when I saw the page count.
All of this was put into a new perspective after a specific phone call later that week.
Erik Halkfdanarson, former Star Principle herald and log time friend, called me just as I was getting home from work.
“Ivo!” exclaimed, “Do you know what you’ve done?”
When he put it like that, I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but none the less, I responded, “Not a clue.”
“You’ve written The Book of the Herald!”
I had blinked at that, and then asked “The what?”
As it turned out, it had been an oft talked about pet project of Star Principle Heralds for years to sit down after they had stepped down and write a comprehensive textbook of all the basics a herald needed to know. For all the idea’s romance and scholarly framing, the fact, it seems, was that everyone was always too bloody tired to do anything of the sort after 2 years of leadership over the kingdom’s heraldic college (which I have heard compared to herding cats more than once).
Evidently I, without knowing anything about this tradition, had stumbled upon it, and then orchestrated it completion in the functional span of 3 weeks. Sure, this makes for good bragging rites, and I won’t say I wasn’t walking a littler taller after that for a day or two. But at the same time, I wasn't sure what type of a message I was sending to people, having accidentally done something that was likely seen as having political baggage tied to it. There being nothing left to say about it, let alone do with this new revelation, I shrugged, and said weakly “Well, I hope people like it.”
The next week, or rather the next few days, were exactly the type of nervous fit I had expected to be in. There was no metric for how this would turn out, and anything under 30 attendees would be a blow to my credibility. And besides that, I was on the verge of climbing the walls the night before, nervous of a hundred little things, fearful of some mistake or oversight, or just falling flat on my face for it all.
Of the teaches who’s contributed written material, few had been able to commit to teaching. In the end I considered this a benefit because part of the point was that someone else needed to be able to teach their modules. But still, to say ‘someone else’ in theory, and then to put it in practice were different matters entirely. That’s not to say we were lacking for educational heavyweights, however. HL Estirl, the herald who managed the kingdom OP, was there to teach her own module on court reports. Master Etienne was there to tech armory. One of the up-and-coming heralds was another close friend of mine, Lord Thomas De Groet, a Mooneschadowe ex-pat who was now the baronial herald of NorthKeep. Annais and I were there, of course, as well as Castellana de Andalucia, another long time friend of mine, and fellow herald. In total, we had pulled in 8 teachers, exactly the number we needed, per our class plans.
I recall waking up that morning, and I recall being energetic. Perhaps it was anticipation, or just the per-event jitters, I don’t know. I know it felt weird going out the door to an SCA event in mundane clothes, even Red Tape did that to me, still. But this wasn’t red-tape.
My church is all of three quarters of a mile from my house, so it actually look me longer to get up, get dressed, and get in the car than it did to drive over there. Abigail was not long after, the boxes and papers for gate with her as he walked in the doors. I never knew how much I didn’t know about gate policy or techniques until I worked with Abigail that weekend. She had become the driving force of the event's financial policy when the barony named her as the gate steward. What to me should have been a simple task quickly availed itself to be much, much more. But my industrious money manager made short work of all of it, including running a successful per-registration process that helped streamline gate to speeds unheard of only a few years before. Never once was I out of the loop, but never once was a penny unaccounted for.
Slowly, and surely, they started rolling in, from Namron, Wiesenfeuer, Northkeep, and the cantons. Young, old, new, and veteran, some there to learn, some there to see what there might be left to learn. And then, at about 9:45am, just before the start of classes, Abigail waived me over to the troll table with a smile. “We just made break even, Ivo.” She said simply.
And just like that, even if by some curse everything else went wrong, my commitment to the Barony of Wiesenfeuer had come though, and they would, when it was all over, not be out a penny for their investment.
The last moments of the morning before classes started was what I had informally called the opening ceremony. Reading from a hand-scrawled set of notes, I talked briefly about the thumb drives, then divided the class two sections, and make sure everyone either had a laptop, or was with someone who did.
Then… I pointed each section to their designation classroom and said to myself, ‘let the marathon begin’.
Even as we set to our tasks, I don’t think any of us really had ever decided on what measure we were going to use, between us or individually, as to how successful we were in this project. There are, of course, a hundred things we could do to mark progress, but in the thick of it that day, in the middle of 2 hour-long sessions, and back to back teachings, the whole thing was a slow blur of motion as we finally presented what we had nearly burned ourselves out on creating.
But, as the good lord is want to do, such a measure provided itself for me.
Eadwyn seo Gathyrde, wife of master Isaac Bane, was not a new fixture for me or for Wiesenfeuer. I had seen her at events over the years, first with one infant son, and now with two children who were every bit as mobile as they were inquisitive. Not surprisingly, her time was most often taken up with watching her charges, and seldom if ever do I recall seeing her without at least one of her kids. In this, she had always been, to my mind, the wife of Isaac. Truly meant as no slight I assure you, and I hold parenting in the highest of regards. Still, motherhood being what it was, she had seemingly found a role for herself, and that seldom saw her far from her children or her husbands side when we crossed paths.
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| Isaac and Eadwyn at Isaac's Laureling ceremony. |
All of our theory, and all of our hopes were panning out, the plan was working.
And then came the last session. This was my last big outside-the-box idea of the event. I wanted something to cap the day off with that was fun, active, but not hokey. I have long hated mock courts in the SCA, and I personally find the comedy they invite both disrespectful of the idea of court, and distracting. People remember the stupid jokes more than they remember the critical parts of what they are studying. This was exactly why I had turned the idea on its head. Today, we would be hosting a an actual court, held by their excellencies of Wiesenfeuer, with actual business, one item of which would be a rock-scissors-paper (Lizard-spock, thank you Donnan) tournament, with full heralds and salutes. Rather than a comedy show where we would need to see through the ridiculousness of it all to learn, we would be enjoying a real, but lighthearted show while seeing the mechanics of court and list heraldry in action.
After getting four people to try their hand at this oddest of weapons choices, imagine my surprise as when I called for a volunteer lyst herald and Eadwyn put her hand up and said ‘Actually, I’d like to do it.”
There is something magical about a moment when you find that skill that you’re unexpectedly good at. For me, it was offering to go out and do morning heralds for a friend at my first Guardian decades ago. When I got back, several people were looking at me with big smiles, and one had said “Ivo, I think we’ve found your calling in life.” I think we call in the SCA, or at least most of us have something like that; a time when that things just… line up and all of a sudden you are good at this thing you’ve never done before. As we went though the rounds of that zany tournament that late afternoon, I saw the glint of childish fun and excitement in Eadwyn’s eyes as she called the pairings and went through the salutes. When the tournament was over, she walked back to her seat with the biggest grin on her face. It was almost infectious.
I think I was too tired to really celebrate the event’s success as much as it deserved. On top of the event itself, I had more or less burned myself to a crisp stressing out about it beforehand. But, it had all come together, and the students were thrilled with the training, the thumb drives, and the interactions not only with each other, but with the teachers.
The final gate count was 38, and after managing to come in a little under budget we had actually made the barony almost a hundred dollars.
And of course, we had the textbook, the crown jewel of our efforts. In the weeks to come I would give the text its own website, update the files, and advertise the hell out of it across every Facebook group that was foolish enough to let me in.
And the book is still making waves, believe it or not. Less than a week after the event I was contacted by Actuarius Pursuivant who was looking for my input on how to rewrite the college of herald’s warranting test, a working relationship that has since added three chapters to the text itself, and has me as a principle adviser for the moment on matters evaluative.
The naysayers haven’t been put to rest either, rest assured of that. There are still deliberate, but none the less futile efforts to ‘convince’ me that my class needs to be broken down an taught as a track at AH&SS, something I had, and still do resists for many good reasons. That being said, the whole of the curriculum and the textbook is now freely available for any and all to download. The work of all of us is not for the few to enjoy.
I’ve been contacted by principle heralds or their deputies from almost every kingdom in the known world asking for a copy of the textbook, something I am glad to offer up. Maybe it will make a splash, maybe it won’t, time will tell, but in any event I wish them the best.
And perhaps there was no better footnote to that day’s events than what quietly took place that night as I was checking my email.
Master Isaac Bane messaged me just after 10 that evening. I’d known Isaac for years, but we’d only recently come to call each other friends. He is a kind spirit, and self admitted bookworm. Much like his wife, his soft spoken, deliberate tone and considered conversations made him easy for me to talk to, and seemed to add gravity to his words when he spoke.
His message to me read, “So apparently Eadwyn really enjoyed the classes today. She’s been talking about it since she got back.”
And in that moment I knew in my soul that we had, in fact, “moved the needle” on heraldic education like we wanted to. Only after that did I let myself believe we really had made a difference.
Three months, or maybe three lifetimes later, as I knelt before the crowns of Ansteorra, beneath a tent large enough to seat two hundred people with ease. Her majesty opened her comments by saying “So, Ivo ran an event this summer, a heralds retreat, and it was an major success, as I understand it. I really hope we see this become a regular thing in our kingdom.”
Vlad picked up the narrative just then by adding “Yeah, Ivo did all this on a really tight budget, too. In fact, I think he was turning over couch pillows there a few times to scrape up loose change so he could pull this off.” While that wasn't literally true, there were some moment where Abigail and I were going over numbers trying to make sure ‘close’ wasn’t ‘too close’ with our funds. “But when it was all said and done, he pulled off an amazing event that had a lot of people talking about it. And for that, we have these words.”
As the herald read the words for the Sable Sparrow, and the audience applauded, Vlad reached down and and fastened on my belt the metal ring and braided tassels of the small service award.
The next night, they would successfully call Annais in as well and recognize her for her work as well at the retreat, adding a sparrow to her awards resume as well.
We'd teamed up again for 40th year, I as the herald in charge, and her agreeing to run a consulting table. The effort had almost come to naught when she 'was attacked by a set of stairs' the Wednesday before. But still, bruises and bumps aside, she had come out and helped, just like she always did.
I firmly believe that awards mean more not when you are not looking for them, but when you aren’t looking at all. I’d given up –completely– on rank of any sort before I got my Star of Merit. I was tired, burned out, and almost ready to quit. But when I stopped saying “where is mine” I found a whole world waiting for me. I got my star because I stopped asking “what can I do?” and started asking ‘what do they need?” That’s what took me to being a member of the order of the Star of Merit. Its what earned me my second thistle, this one for heraldic arts.
And its what earned me my first sable sparrow, for an “extraordinary act of sacrifice and service” to the kingdom, and for my fellow heralds.
The awards of Ansteorran, I have learned, are not ladder rungs to be climbed quickly. Rather, they are mile markers for the soul of those who care to go on the adventure of a lifetime.
His Lordship Ivo Blackhawk
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"Long Live the King!"
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